H. Mason Armstrong stood twisting from side to side all the while bellowing in agony. The hole where his heart had once been was black with the carnivorous insects and was obviously increasing in size as thousands of chomping mouths proceeded to devour him from the inside out. Likewise, the gaunt form of Emerson Washburn twitched and convulsed as the tiny creatures filled the gashes in his chest, while lapping up his oozing fluids. Some had zeroed in on the area between his legs and were chewing on the dangling threads of musculature which was all that remained of his severed genitalia. He slapped the palm of one hand against his chest while batting at his crotch in a useless attempt to stop the hungry things from enjoying their feast.
All around them, the ground suddenly began to tremble and the family found themselves in the middle of an earthquake. Then before his eyes, Jason saw the well begin to change shape. The ice holding the circular wall of soil together, which formed the shape of the well began to melt and the wall crumbled back to soil. The creatures screamed and howled uncontrollably as the insect-like scavengers devoured their mottled flesh.
Next, the place where the opening for the well had been was visible to Jason and Stephanie, but it too was changing its appearance. Instead of its original round shape, it took on the shape of giant slit in the soil, looking as if God had taken a giant ax and cleaved a gash in the earth. The frozen ground around the opening was thawing as a cloud of steam rose up all around the crevasse. The earth around the opening was becoming hot and molten. Jason could smell something foul and sulfurous coming from inside the crevasse. The small bubbling pools of lava spurted from inside the hole followed by occasional bursts of flames. Soon the flames were larger, almost twenty feet high, as the ground continued to shake with tremors.
Jason was not and could not possibly be prepared for what happened next. Long rope-like flaming tentacles sprang up out of the opening whipping and spitting flames like a nest of uncontrollable vipers. One of the whipping lava lariats wrapped itself around Dwight Livingston’s throat and began pulling him toward the hole. Dwight screamed and howled "Noooo!" repeatedly while trying desperately to fight off the grip of the wild flaming loop. An instant later, another rope of molten lava wrapped around his arms and legs, and soon he was being pulled downward into the bubbling earthen caldron of pain. Just before Dwight disappeared from his sight, Jason witnessed the specter’s head separate from his body as did his arms and legs as his spectral form was torn to pieces.
Jason heard a woman scream and saw Marie Livingston entwined in the fiery filaments, which melted the flesh from her ghostly body while simultaneously dragging her contorting form toward the volcanic pit. Her hair was ablaze and burning like a torch. She looked directly at Jason as if pleading for help, when her eyeballs exploded outward as a swarm of black insects streamed from her now vacant sockets. Likewise her scream mouth vomited a swarm of buzzing pestilence.
The charred skeletal remains of Jack Moran, the creature Jason had not been able to identify, was face down clawing and digging at the earth trying desperately to escape as ropes of flames wrapped around its ankles and pulled the creature toward the fiery threshold.
Within the next few seconds, the each one of the horrible beings were likewise pulled down into the flaming portal to what Jason assumed was Hell. He could not think of anything but what he imagined Hell to be that was capable of the unholy carnage he was witnessing. The earth continued to shake so violently; Jason found it almost impossible to remain upright. After a moment or two, Jason smelled something he feared almost as much as the horrifying sight unfolding before him. Despite the sulfurous stench coming from the flaming split in the earth, Jason was certain he smelled something he recognized, which was extremely dangerous and which was not from Hell but was of his own world. He smelled natural gas and suddenly realized the line which connected the main house to the hexagonal spa building had become ruptured by the earthquake.
With the conflagration of fire billowing from the crack in the earth, Jason knew he only had seconds to get his family to safety. He turned and tried desperately to lead Stephanie and Sammy away from the eminent explosion. But before they gotten more than twenty feet away, the spa building blew up sending deadly debris of flaming rock and timber flying high into the sky.
Chapter 40
The pressure from the blast knocked Jason, Stephanie and Sammy to the ground as a storm of flaming debris began plummeting down toward them. Despite his shocked condition, Jason managed to become a human shield, covering Stephanie and Sammy with his own body in an attempt to protect them from the rain of flaming hellfire. He prepared himself for what was to come, fearing he might die in the process but prepared to use his last breath if necessary to save his family.
He heard the fiery rubble of stone and rock fall around him and gritted his teeth in anticipation of the agonizing pain he knew was coming. But to his surprise he felt nothing. He heard sizzling sounds from above and cautiously lifted his head to try to see what was happening. All around them the formerly frozen meadow was ablaze as fiery debris continued to rain down like a vision from some hellish nightmare. Yet for some unknown reason, a small area immediately near them remained untouched.
“Jason?” Stephanie asked, “What’s happening? Why aren’t we dead?”
For a moment Jason began to wonder if they actually might in fact be dead. He replied, “I… I don’t know, Steph. None of the stuff seems to be landing anywhere near us. It’s like we are protected or something.”
“Look!” Stephanie exclaimed pointing upward. She still was lying on the ground but had rolled over on her side. About ten feet above them the raining pieces of burning debris seemed to miraculously stop in the air, sizzle then turn to dust and slide down the outside of what appeared to be a giant translucent dome of some sort, which glimmered with millions of tiny sparkling lights. The large structure completely covered them, acting as a protective barrier. “Look at it, Jason! What in the world is it? Where did it come from?”
Sammy sat up and pointed to a place in the meadow about thirty feet away and said, “Boys.”
Jason and Stephanie followed his gaze and saw two bright glowing forms of light, which seemed to be roughly shaped like two small boys. The brightness of their iridescent forms was almost impossible to look at directly. But through squinted eyes, shielded by his hand, Jason could make out a stream of luminescent particles extending from the shimmering beings linking them to their mysterious protective dome.
“Boys help,” Sammy said. “Boys phone Daddy. Boys help Sammy.”
Then before Jason and Stephanie had a chance to grasp the significance of what was happening, they heard another incredible explosion, even greater than the first. They turned to see their beautiful renovated farmhouse/mansion blasted into flaming rubble before their eyes. The shock wave from the blast shook the earth below them and nearly knocked them down. They saw the translucent dome wobbled from the blast but still maintained its shape. As before, the fiery remnants flew far and wide setting the remaining out buildings on the property ablaze. Soon every single building and outbuilding was being reduced to cinders.
“Oh my God no!” Stephanie cried. “Everything we own. Everything we have is burning up, Jason. Our house, our clothing, our furniture, it’s all gone.”
Jason’s stomach sank with the frustration of the loss. But then he realized what they had just managed to barely escape and suddenly the burning buildings and all of their earthly possessions became nothing more than that: just a bunch of burning material and fallen stones. “Don’t cry, Steph. All of that was just stuff. We can worry about it tomorrow. Right now all that matters is we are safe and alive.” He knew Stephanie agreed with him, but she still needed to grieve for the loss of their belongings.
In a few minutes, the rain of debris stopped, and Jason saw the translucent sparkling dome which surrounded them begin to dissipate and fade away. In the distance, the two glowing boys stood quietly, arms at their sides.
“Go see boys,”
Sammy said as he squirmed in Jason’s arms, wanting to be put down. He held Jason and Stephanie’s hands, and the three carefully walked between the flaming remnants to the place where the boys quietly stood. Now they all could clearly see the Livingston boys in greater detail. They were dressed in bright white dress shirts and white pants but were barefoot. They wore a look of contentment which Stephanie believed came from their seeing the Wright family together and safe.
“All things happen for a reason,” Stephanie thought. She found herself contemplating how because the spirit boys were here and had not moved on to whatever afterlife awaited them; she and her family were safe and alive. Had the two crossed over ninety years earlier, then the three of them surely would have died in the explosions. “All things happen for a reason,” she thought again, smiling satisfactorily.
Stephanie stepped forward and said, “Matthew. Charles. Thank you so much for protecting me and my family. You saved our lives.” The two spectral shapes stood looking at her but said nothing. “Had you lived, I’m sure you would have grown to be fine men, and I would have been proud to have had you as great uncles. God bless you both and thank you again for all you have done for us.”
After a few seconds slight smiles appeared on their cherubic faces as they looked upward as if hearing someone calling to them. Then they began to slowly dissolve as Stephanie had seen the dome dissolve. Next, two long streams of effervescent particles streaked up onto the heavens. Stephanie thought she heard the boys calling to their Aunt Amelia Miller. Perhaps the time had finally come for the boys to join her and Amelia had come to lead them home.
“Bye bye, boys,” Sammy said. He heard their voices inside his head distant and fading. “Goodbye, Sammy. You have been brave and have helped to free us so we can move on. Live a long and good life and maybe we will see you again someday.”
Sammy didn’t understand everything the boys were talking about, but he could tell they were both happy and were going to a place far away, where they would never be sad again.
Jason and Stephanie looked about them at the burning buildings, the billowing smoke and the debris strewn patches of burning meadow.
“What now?” Stephanie asked, staring around in stunned confusion.
“Well,” Jason replied, pulling out his cell phone, “now I guess we call 911.”
Epilogue
“Wright Industrial Consulting; Jason Wright speaking,” Jason said into his desk phone. “No. Sorry. I don’t have need for that at the moment, but I’ll keep you in mind. Thank you and goodbye.” He hung up the phone and thought, “Salesmen! Well, I suppose they have to earn a living too.” He had found since setting up his own business and working from his home office he seemed to be getting a lot of ‘cold calls’ from a variety of salesmen. This was probably because he had been doing a lot to promote his business through a number of professional and Internet resources. “I suppose since I put myself out there to try to gain some name recognition, I have to assume the push is starting to work by the number of sales calls I’ve been getting. Too bad most of them aren’t from potential clients.”
As he was about to return to the project on his desk he stopped for a moment and found himself once more reflecting back on how much had happened. And how much had changed over the past six months, since that unbelievable night.
After the firemen had managed to get the blaze under control and the gas company had capped the leak, he, Stephanie and Sammy had been taken to a hospital in the city of Yuengsville to be treated for shock as well as minor cuts and abrasions. The rescue workers were amazed the three had even survived the carnage. When they had arrived on the scene the workers had found them aimlessly walking toward the main road, down the driveway as a conflagration equivalent to a war zone could be seen burning behind them. One rescue worker described the sight as appearing like three survivors escaping from Hell. Jason had been carrying his son in one arm while his other was secured tightly around his wife. The fire trucks had proceeded up to the home site while the ambulance crew looked after the family near a large rock in the driveway which bore the inscription “Fallen Stones”.
None of the Wrights seemed to have had much of a recollection of what actually happened, but somehow they had managed to survive a gas explosion which had destroyed every single structure on the property. Even the in-ground swimming pool and patio area as well as Jason’s pickup truck in the driveway had been blown to bits.
Later Jason called his brother-in-law, Chuck, from the hospital to check on Jeremy and Cindy. He wanted to be sure the specters had not done anything to harm them. When he heard they were ok, he quickly filled Chuck in on what happened – being careful to exclude the mention of demonic ghosts - and asked him to keep the kids for another day until he and Stephanie could get some details worked out. He knew it would take months until their lives even came close to returning to normal, but he figured he could at least get out of the hospital and settled into hotel as a temporary measure by the next day.
The property was a total loss with everything being burned to dust in the inferno. All that remained of any of the building was rubble. Luckily for the Wright family, included in the tax escrow for the property was a clause for automatic payment of their homeowners insurance as well. Jason and Stephanie forgot about how Armstrong had explained everything to them on the day of the settlement. Since Armstrong’s death, another lawyer had taken over his practice and assisted Jason and Stephanie in resolving matters. Eventually they received a settlement check for close to three million dollars for their loss.
After what they had been through, Jason and Stephanie both decided it would be best to move back to Berks County and begin again with a fresh start. Jason quit his job at the Ashton facility and pursued his dream of starting his own consulting business. He already had several lucrative client contracts, and since he had managed to leave his old job on good terms, the Ashton factory also agreed to become one of his clients.
He and Stephanie built a brand new home in Western Berks County in a new upscale subdivision with large homes on two acre lots. The home didn’t compare in opulence to the one which was destroyed, but that was just fine with them. Jason had a home office from which he could run his business, and Stephanie had a small studio she could use to write her books. The kids each had their own bedrooms, a large family room and an in-ground pool in the back yard.
Stephanie’s latest book was doing amazingly well in a very tough market. Fortunately for her, about a week before the fire, Jason had sneaked into her loft in the middle of the night and found her book and illustrations buried under a stack of papers. Unbeknownst to Stephanie, Jason packaged everything and then sent it to her publisher. About a month later a galley proof of the book arrived at the apartment where they were temporarily staying until their new home construction was finished. Jason had it mailed to him so he could surprise Stephanie with it, which he did one night while having dinner at their favorite restaurant.
He was delighted by her tearful reaction. He hadn’t seen her so happy since their wedding day or the day Sammy was born. He supposed holding a new book that was personally created was distantly like holding a newborn. Stephanie was so inspired; she immediately began working on her next book. She had also been doing numerous book signings, readings and interviews with magazines, newspapers and blogs as well as television and radio.
Stephanie no longer had any desire to recreate her family history and told Jason perhaps it would be better if the kids didn’t know about their ancestors. Maybe in a hundred years or so one of their dependents might take an interest and begin researching anew, but she didn’t want to record what she knew or what they had been through. She thought once again, “Everything happens for a reason.” All of her data was destroyed in the fire and so perhaps it was meant to be destroyed.
She and Jason almost never discussed the events of that horrible evening again hoping perhaps that time might erase the memories. But they both knew deep inside that on those nights when pleasant
dreams turn unexpectedly to horrifying nightmares, the images would return. There would be little they could do to stop that but they could opt to not discuss it while awake. Sammy seemed to have forgotten completely about it or else with his brain’s child-like resilience he simply found a way to block it out, which was just fine with his parents.
Since Emerson Washburn’s will required they not be permitted to sell the property and must keep it in the family, Stephanie thought of a way to put the land to work, making at least some money for them. She asked Jason to hire a contractor to remove all of the debris from the property. Then, since the gas line was capped out at the highway, she had them dig up and eliminate the old gas line. They filled in the foundation and the in-ground pool remnants with top soil and re-tilled the entire forty acres, making it perfect for farming. Then they contacted a number of local farmers and found several interested in leasing a section of the farm for their own use. The income from the lease was not much, but it made Stephanie happy to know the land, which had once caused so much sorrow, was now being put to a good use.
Things were finally getting back to normal for the Wright family, now that they were settled in their new home. Jason could hear Stephanie and the kids in the back yard swimming in the pool, enjoying the start of their summer vacation. The scars of that horrible night were finally starting to fade and life was beginning anew.
Jason decided to check over the latest proposal he had prepared for one of his new potential clients. He reached over and removed the paperweight which held the pile of documents in place. He picked up the weight and smiled knowingly as he turned it about in his hand. It was a small flat, irregular-shaped piece of stone, about an inch or so thick.
Fallen Stones Page 42